my happy place

a place to remember

enz — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:43:36 +0000

this place has grown and shared many shades of my life and psyche for a fair bit of time now, and events chronicled here have invariably shaped me. as time progresses, familiar places take on different meaning while staying significant enough to remain in our lives. as places lose that significance, they move into our past, remaining in our lives only as memories.

alas, it is time to leave this place, and find a new direction.

to my friends and readers who come here once in a while to enjoy the view, thank you for the memories, and see you around soon.

leaving with the kidz

enz — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:54:47 +0000

have been pretty busy since i got back on monday meeting people up and unpacking and using up singapore’s precious water supply by showering like 5 times a day..

right now im packing my bags again for my grad trip to tw/hk with the kidz. i’m looking forward to a really good time..

catcha guys when i get back!

leaving, coming

enz — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:29:12 +0000

tonight i will return to dear edmonton, grab my stuff, and hop on a plane back to good old singapore. this is my 100th post, so fittingly, and hopefully, another century of posts will follow once i return to life at home. someone once said that wishes are just that: wishes. but still i wish this exchange werent ending quite so soon. i doubt i will find a reason to return to edmonton anytime soon.. but im gg to miss it nontheless..

that doesnt mean that im not looking forward to seeing the inside of changi airport again tho.

i havent had the time to write about the trip after montreal, but i will.. if and when i can find the time.

ppl… im coming home! cya soon!

montreal

enz — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:46:10 +0000

being in montreal is like enjoying a french movie with english subtitles. the whole place is so french yet when you open your mouth to speak the comparatively coarse english language u never fear that you might not be understood.

old, colonial-like buildings mesh with new, modern glass skyscrapers. history, culture and all that modern city living should be like all in one place.

it’s like a colonial englishwoman married a french man and they both decided to go live in america.

cold feet

enz — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:18:41 +0000

seems that the weather does have a way of mocking us. it’s been snowing for the past 2 days nonstop. highly unexpected, but not at all unusual apparently. so it’s back to the half a foot high of snow on the ground, -10deg C temperatures and looking like little polyester/wool/down balls tottering down the sidewalk whenever we go outdoors..

i can’t describe how much i’m not looking forward to melting like an icecube in singapore’s urban jungle…

meanwhile, as i study in the ship (our hall’s cafeteria), i’m warming my fingers by holding my timhorton’s coffee up to my lips ever so often while my feet are getting cold cos im wearing my national footwear..

2:02am

enz — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:39:54 +0000

time now is 2:02am. i have found that whichever part of the world i am in:

1. i still study better at night

2. i still love having ppl ard me when i study

3. it’s as quiet as ntu study areas at 2am in the morning

4. having a laptop open while studying (or pretending to) is still as distracting

5. mugging still feels the same

6. the only thing that changes is msn, which is even more distracting because for all my friends it’s like 4 in the afternoon

all that stuff is in my head of course.

im comfily settled in the sub (students’ union building) right now, with my laptop open, earphones plugged in, a textbook opened to page 273 and a notebook strewn across the little table with my green pencil resting on top.

the study area is a nice, open place with tables arranged nicely among low concrete partitions. from my position i have a clear view of the sub food court directly in front of me accross the hallway, which contains stores like java jive (high class kopi), subway (same as in sg), edo (oily noodles pretending to be jap food), funky pickle (pizza – nice!), cram dunk (low class kopi), and a coupla other stores that i have yet to, yet have no desire to try. i really should. just for the heck of it.

every night the cleaners will come by with mops and clean the floor with soapy suds that make the whole place smell like it was just flooded by water from swimming pool whose attendant has a significantly diminished sensitivity to the smell of chlorine. there will be guys driving this big thing with scrubs on the front around - like those big trucks you see on the roads in sg that sweep up litter on the sides of the roads – presumably scrubbing the dirt and muck of the floor. not that there’s alot of it to start with, now that spring is most definitely here and people dont walk in with muddy wet shoes anymore.

it’s so easy

to act like i’ve lived in this wonderful weather with temperatures ranging from -45 to 18 deg C for all my life.

to pretend that i will be back next semester.

to imagine that i have been here for the past 5 semesters, mugging like i am now.

yes i still remember. and i can still imagine,

that i’m in can A, or in some good old nbs tutorial room. and i can remember, studying with such fervor in one of the smu seminar rooms.

so distant and surreal, yet i know it happened.

and a little while from now, as i walk through the corridors of nbs, so too will i remember my time here in exactly the same way.

the familiarity, and the ease with which one gets used to things,

yet the frightening speed with which we let these experiences slip away,

makes one wonder, if any individual human endeavour is meant to have any kind of permanence.

1 to 5

enz — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:27:46 +0000

1 last day of school tomorrow

2 final assignments due for the term

3 more lessons in the morning

4 hours of exams, and

5 weeks to go before i see singapore again

it’s just a feeling. or is it?

enz — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:37:04 +0000

“close your eyes, just for a moment..

..what am i doing?”

“you’re.. touching me..”

“touch. how do you know?”

“because i feel it.”

“you should trust that.. you dont trust it enough.”

- city of angels

accounting issues

enz — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:09:36 +0000

its interesting the way something that something such as accounting, perceived as boring and dead, can reflect life so accurately.

a year ago my peers and i learned that all accounting issues concerning relevance and reliability that we grapple with stem from this innate inexplicable desire to assess the present and predict the future. accounting numbers are so open to manupilation because we base our perception of the present on our prediction of the future. what’s worse, we look to the past (which nowadays seems to be less and less relevant) to make that very estimate of the future. it just sounds wrong doesnt it?

but wait a minute. possibly, accounting is this way because on a fundamental level, it mirrors life. we all have hopes and dreams for the future, and whatever we do in the present is to reach some specific or unspecific goal in the future. and just what do we do in the present? well that pretty much depends on our past doesnt it? thats why we go to school, and thats how we become who we are today.

now, in auditing, we learn to face the same worldly problems that we all have to go through in life. and one of the first problems i’ve to overcome is my auditing term paper, which i’m afraid, has no satisfactory answer either.

accounting: boring? maybe. reliable? questionably so. relevant? definitely.

down the mountain we go

enz — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:34:42 +0000

the heavens opens up its bowels and empties nice flurry white patches of intricately designed frozen flakes upon the land.

now that the weather is just freezing, and not ridiculously cold, its much easier to enjoy the snow. alas, springtime is coming. i probably will be here long enough to miss the winter, but probably not long enough to be awed by the full colours of spring.

nontheless, i think plenty has happened in the last 9-10 weeks to make my time here more than worthwhile. not to mention the 3 ski resort areas of jasper, banff, and lake louise, all so far removed from anything remotely familiar to what we have back home. as one guy on the ski lift in jasper was telling me:

“u ain’t skied before if you’ve never skied on a mountain.”

how true. as the fear of being so high up above ground level subsides and you take in the grandeur and breathtaking sights with light snowflakes getting in your eyes, it takes you a moment to realise how just how tiny and vulnerable you are. then comes the drop, the rush, and the aching muscles as you spare no effort to keep yourself from falling over. and after you’ve fallen, as you inevitably will, the sheer immensity of effort to climb back up the hill and clip your skis on again, before continuing downwards, and then scrambling to get in line for the lift to take you up the mountain again.

words will never adequately describe what i felt on the mountain. pictures do slightly better but are ultimately a pale substitute for the real thing. you can see what i saw, hear what i heard, but never feel what i felt.